


He Stammers So Beautifully

by Ferrero13



Series: The King's Man [2]
Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015), The King's Speech (2010)
Genre: -Ish, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Amnesia, F/M, Fix-It, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-07
Updated: 2015-11-07
Packaged: 2018-04-30 10:59:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5161247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ferrero13/pseuds/Ferrero13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry is gone, Albert is back, and Merlin wishes he has hair to pull out.</p><p>The stammer is back, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	He Stammers So Beautifully

**Author's Note:**

> Part 2 of ??? No end in sight yet. And this is still pre-relationship. Also, disclaimers: I have no grasp of the Queen's personality so everything here is made up, and I further have very limited knowledge about stammering and amnesia and how to write both convincingly. If there's anything that anybody would like to correct (such as my handling of the medical conditions, or even grammatical and spelling oversights), I welcome it.
> 
> 07/11/2015: I've been informed by Beguiled that the Queen's family apparently calls her 'Lilibet', which I would never in a million years have guessed. So in honour of the new fact that I've just learnt, I've changed the Queen's nickname from Bessie to Lilibet.
> 
> 08/11/2015: So clearly I need to do more research and stop forgetting important dates. The Queen wasn't heir apparent, but heir presumptive, because at that point they were still observing male-preference primogeniture (or something to that effect), so I've changed that. But there's not much I can do about the fact that it kind of slipped my mind that the Queen Mother passed away fairly recently and hence any incarnate would only be a teenager at best around the time of the story. So. Well. Let's just assume things worked out somehow and that her incarnate is a grown woman now. *cough* sloppy writing *cough* Thanks to Marina78 for enlightening me.

Eggsy finds the Queen in one of Valentine’s many holding cells. She’s surrounded by enough corgis to bury her alive, which is an unexpected if pleasant surprise. The lines etched into her face—evidence of years well lived—make it difficult for him to recognise her as the young woman Eggsy once knew, but when she turns her bright, startled eyes on him he finds himself slipping backwards through time. The rock of the cell walls begins to recede, splashed over with the familiar blues of a nursery from another time.

He almost calls her Lilibet.

“Hello,” she says.

“Your Majesty,” Eggsy responds, trying to bow around the bruises blossoming under his suit.

“I don’t suppose you know why I’m here?” The Queen picks up a corgi and settles it on her lap, stroking its wheat-coloured fur calmly. Eggsy shouldn’t be here. It should be Harry—who was once Albert—who ought to be having this private one-on-one with his daughter. Then he remembers that Harry’s dead, and blood runs cold in his veins for the umpteenth time again that day.

“I’m afraid I don’t have the clearance to speak, Your Majesty.”

“I have missed your accent,” she remarks apropos of absolutely nothing. “What do you call yourself now?”

“Eggsy, Ma’am. But my real name’s Gary Unwin,” Eggsy replies.

“How is Albert doing?” she asks lightly.

Any response Eggsy may have stutters and dies on the tip of his tongue. “What?”

“He goes by Galahad in your organisation,” she clarifies, still threading her fingers through the corgi’s hair.

Eggsy tries not to gape. Rather, he tries not to be too obvious about his sudden inability to string words together. “How did you know…"

“We met once, briefly, over one of his missions. Barely acknowledged me.” She smiles kindly at Eggsy. “But he recognised me, I could tell. He did always have that little twitch in the corner of his mouth just before he says my name, and he very nearly did, you know. He would’ve, if one of the maids hadn’t see fit to intrude upon our moment.”

“Your Majesty, I beg your pardon, but why are you telling me this?” Eggsy asks, half pleading. He doesn’t want to hear anymore of Harry. He just wants to drown himself in a bottle and forget that today ever happened.

“Something terrible has happened,” the Queen says suddenly, smile slipping off her face.

Eggsy can tell that she’s not talking about Valentine or the sorry state of his severed tie. “Yes, Ma’am.”

She sighs. “He was always so self-sacrificing.”

“Please don’t worry, Your Majesty,” Eggsy tells her with the last vestiges of composure that he can dredge up, swallowing heavily when the words stick in his throat like he was Albert reincarnate. He pulls together a shaky smile for her but he knows that it’s unconvincing at best and positively reeks of devastation at worst. “I’m sure the penguin with wings shaped like herrings will be in Southampton Waters by lunchtime to take the 2:30 to Weybridge, change to Clapton junction, swim up the Thames, out through the plughole, and turn into an short-tailed albatross with wings so large that he could wrap his daughters up in them.”

The Queen closes her eyes tightly, fingers stilling in the hair of her corgi, then opens them and looks right at Eggsy. Extending her free arm, she says to him softly, “Come here.”

So Eggsy goes.

The part of him that’s never known the Queen personally in any capacity thinks that this is an utterly surreal experience, but the other part, the one that went to war for Albert and tucked two little girls into bed when their parents weren’t home, collapses all too willingly into the Queen’s solid, steady embrace.

\---

The highlight of Eggsy’s day is when the Queen gives him her number and tells him to call. He keeps thinking of Harry as he thumbs the little sheet of paper with her number curled in rich blue. Lilibet’s handwriting never used to be that neat.

(Albert had strong opinions about his daughter’s scribble. Thinking of Albert then makes Eggsy think of Harry, and now Eggsy has to physically stop himself from calling the Queen to ask if he can bury his ugly, puffy face into her shoulder.)

\---

Because this isn’t that sort of movie and people who fail Kingsman selection tests don’t get second chances, Eggsy isn’t offered Kingsman knighthood even though he was instrumental in stopping the almost-apocalypse. Merlin approaches him with a position in the Merlin Division instead, and Eggsy accepts without a second thought. Harry thought he could do it—Harry was the only person who ever thought Eggsy could do anything with himself—and Eggsy doesn’t know what else he can do with his meagre list of qualifications anyway.

The Marines surely won’t accept him back after he left so abruptly, and he doesn’t think he’s capable of pretending that nothing’s wrong around his mates either. At least here, in Kingsman, everybody understands if he’s less than completely put together.

Sometimes he gets calls from the Queen herself, who has extended a standing invitation to tea at Buckingham Palace. Eggsy takes it up whenever the memory of Harry’s ghost starts turning his fingers to ice. He turns up in his best suit—the one Harry commissioned for him—and wears his manners like armour. She introduces him to the members of her family, distracts him from their questioning looks, makes him memorise the names of all her corgis, and showers him with so many cookies that Eggsy has to run extra miles for a week to burn them all off.

Eggsy wholeheartedly approves of the woman Lilibet has become, corgi obsession and all.

(She tried to make him call her that again for old time’s sake. Eggsy acquiesces just once. It is bad manners to keep royalty waiting, after all, what more the Queen.)

\---

Eggsy is almost afraid to ask about Merlin’s ongoing search for Harry. The man appears to believe that Harry is still alive, given a lack of body outside the church and a corresponding lack of bodies matching Harry’s description in the morgues. Eggsy barely dares to hope. Hope is a dangerous thing. Eggsy would do well to remember that.

“We’ve checked every hospital database for any and all of Galahad’s aliases. We’ve even tried his real name. None of the unidentified patients match his injuries, and god forbid the hospital staff in the States fail to recognise an English accent a mile off!” Merlin rants at him in between training Eggsy and training new recruits for open positions at the Round Table. (But not Galahad’s. Not until his status is confirmed. Not yet.) “The bastard’s out there, I just know it. Why’s he making it so damn hard to find him? You’d think he doesn’t want to be found, at this rate.”

Eggsy tips his mug of tea back and forth in his hands, watching it slosh around repetitively. He takes a sip, then puts it back on the table. Shooting Merlin a small, half-hearted smile, he says wryly, “Try Albert.”

“Are you pulling names out of a hat?”

“‘e’s never used this name before?”

“Not that I know of.”

Eggsy sits up suddenly, feeling his heartbeat quicken. “Try it. Try it now.”

“But Albert _what_ , Eggsy?” Merlin asks, unimpressed. “There are too many Albert’s in the world to check every single one of them.”

“Windsor.”

“Like royalty?”

“You just gonna keep askin’ me questions or are you gonna do it?” Eggsy exclaims, veering quickly into frustration. His hands are wringing together restlessly and his breath comes in short, choppy spasms. All across his skin, every nerve is alight with fearful anticipation. He shouldn’t hope. He really shouldn’t. _But what if Harry is actually alive?_

“All right, all right, I’m on it. Just hold your horses, Eggsy,” Merlin mutters as he starts typing away at his keyboard, glaring at Eggsy every now and then. “Albert Windsor, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

Merlin presses a key with an air of finality. “There. All done. Just give it a couple of hours and we’ll know if your shot in the dark has miraculously struck bullseye. What’s got your knickers in a twist anyway?”

“Inside joke. Nothing you’d be interested in,” Eggsy utters softly under his shallow breath.

“Doesn’t seem like just an inside joke to me,” Merlin remarks. He glances at one of his many screens that’s spitting out the results of one of his many surveillance programmes from one of his many projects. “I won’t ask, but just know that if this is successful I will be very, very curious and will use all means available to me to get to the bottom of it.”

“You’re welcome to try, but I really don’t think technology’s gonna ‘elp you much ‘ere,” Eggsy shrugs.

Merlin purses his lips, glowering sourly at Eggsy. “Cheeky. You’re so confident, aren’t you? We’ll see who’s laughing—” something makes a series of high-pitched beeping noises and Merlin snaps his head towards his computer, quickly typing in a couple of commands and pulling up a window on his largest screen.

Eggsy stares at it, and something dislodges from its chokehold around his throat.

“Fuck me,” Merlin whispers almost reverently.

On the screen, one Albert Windsor is noted to drift in and out of consciousness intermittently in a hospital in Kentucky. There are additional instructions to nurses to be especially careful when changing the dressing of the deep gouge on his left temple left by a bullet which trajectory can only be considered ‘glancing’ by the loosest of definitions. Beside esoteric and very thorough medical descriptions is a picture of Harry Hart, face half buried in bandages.

Eggsy is grinning so widely that he thinks what he is doing might even be considered baring his teeth. “Who’s laughin’ now?”

“The both of us, clearly,” Merlin says, relief coming up through his lips in short bursts of laughter.

“Can I take the private jet?”

“I’ll do you one better—I’ll fly you there myself.”

\---

Walking down the hospital corridor feels like wading through honey. Everything passes by in slow-motion. The doctor’s voice drags on like a moaning whale song, long and distant and utterly incomprehensible, and the nurse expressing her very vocal concerns for her patient’s previous lack of known family is just a another moving white spot bobbing along against a white, white world. The distance between the reception and Harry’s room seems to grow larger with every step that Eggsy takes.

Merlin is talking with the doctor while Eggsy follows behind like a particularly useless piece of decoration which only functions are to look stupid and convert oxygen to carbon dioxide. His brain is barely working at this point, too eager to finally see Harry for the first time in ages.

Eggsy blinks, and suddenly he’s right next to Harry’s bed, watching his chest rise and fall slowly. The doctor is telling them how lucky Mister Windsor is to have escaped with his life, much less his eye. Eggsy nods appropriately when Merlin elbows him or steps on his toes, and by the time the doctor and nurse leave them alone with Harry and the seven other patients in the ward Eggsy feels like one giant bruise.

But then he looks at Harry and, well, what’s a giant bruise compared to the broken pieces of skull in Harry’s head.

He looks peaceful, at least. More peaceful than Albert’s every looked whenever he fell asleep at his desk, that’s for sure.

“I wasn’t joking when I said I really want to know about this ‘Albert’ business, you know,” Merlin says as they stare down at Harry’s sleeping face.

“‘S not really any of your business,” Eggsy tells him, shrugging.

“Everything is my business.”

“It’s a bad habit of yours.”

“Perhaps.”

Something like a groan pushes sluggishly through the air between them. Eggsy’s eyes flicker to Harry’s and he waits with bated breath as Harry slowly blinks awake. Harry’s only visible eye flutters open and it darts around the room haphazardly until finally settling on Eggsy. His jaw clenches, his throat seizes, and he makes a series of wet sounds that are hauntingly familiar.

“E-Edward?” he mumbles.

Merlin gives Eggsy an incredulous look over Harry’s prone body but Eggsy ignores it in favour of processing a profound sense of déjà vu that has stolen his voice from him.

“W—what are you…doing here?” Harry asks him through the contractions of his throat.

“What do you remember?” Eggsy asks urgently.

Harry swallows a couple of times, like he’s forgotten what it feels like to speak. “Aren’t you…aren’t you supposed to be at…the camp? W-where am I? W-where is Elizabeth?”

“Albert, what do you remember?”

Harry’s brows furrow deeply, and he suddenly gives Eggsy a glare that is all venom. “Wh—who are you? Y-you are not Edw-ward. You are a terrible im-imposter! Can’t even get his c-clothes right!” he spits, and tries frantically to inch away from Eggsy.

“Albert, please, just calm down! I promise, I’m Edward, all right? You’ve been shot. Please don’t aggravate your wounds. You took a couple o’ bullets t’the back and a stab from a knife between your shoulders, and there’s an ‘ead wound we’re not sure will ‘eal properly if you don’t rest like you’re supposed to.” Eggsy lays a hand on Harry’s shoulder. “Please.”

Harry stills under his fingers. “But you are off at the—at the battlefields. You can’t b-be here.”

“Nobody’ll miss one soldier, yeah? But you, on the other ‘and. They’ll notice if you turn up dead.”

“My w-wife—”

Eggsy pats Harry’s hand reassuringly. “I’m sorry, but the Missus can’t be ‘ere today.”

“And my…daughters?”

“Margaret’s attending lessons. D’you want me to telephone Lilibet?”

Harry stares up at Eggsy for a long while, eyes large with uncertainty. “Yes, please,” he says finally.

“Right. Just rest ‘ere, yeah? I’ll be back soon,” Eggsy tells him. He pulls up the blankets that have fallen away in Harry’s struggle and folds them around him the way he used to tuck little Elizabeth and Margaret into bed a lifetime ago. Harry watches warily as Eggsy’s hands work on the blanket, and his gaze follows him as Eggsy gestures for Merlin to come with him.

“What was all that about? Who’s Edward?” Merlin demands once they’re out of earshot in the corridor outside the ward.

“You’re a smart man; I’m sure you can figure it out,” Eggsy says glumly. He leans back against a wall and covers his face with his hands. “Fuck. I’m not sure what to tell him. Both the Missus and Margaret are dead, and Lilibet’s an old woman now. I can’t just bring ‘er to see ‘im! ‘e’s gonna go mental!”

“Maybe if you tell him as much he’ll understand,” Merlin says unsympathetically.

“Did you see ‘im? I can’t do that to ‘im!”

“Why not? Are you going to wait until he figures out for himself that his non-existent wife and daughters are either dead or old?” Merlin comments dryly. “He’s not even married!”

“Yeah, but don’t tell ‘im that or ‘e’ll order you exiled.”

“He can’t do that.”

“No, but Lilibet can probably pull a few strings.”

“Who’s Lilibet?”

“You’ll know ‘er if you ever meet ‘er,” Eggsy smiles humourlessly.

“You’re being so delightfully vague. What a shame. You’d have been such an asset as a proper agent,” Merlin laments.

“You can blame centuries-worth of elitist upbringing for that,” Eggsy mutters distractedly, then finally comes to a decision. “I’m calling Lilibet. She’ll know what to do.”

“You do just that. I’ll just stand here and pretend I know what’s going on.”

Eggsy pulls out his phone and dials. The dial tone doesn’t ring for long before the call is answered.

“Eggsy?” Distantly, through the line, somebody else asks, “What’s an Eggsy?”

“Your Majesty,” Eggsy greets, and watches as Merlin’s expression grows even more confused and gobsmacked by the second. “If you’re currently occupied I can—”

“Are you coming over today?” she cuts him off.

“No, um…I called to, well. We, uh, we found him.”

There is a long pause. “Galahad?”

“Yeah. He…he thinks we’re still at war with the Axis,” Eggsy tells her somewhat desperately, and pointedly ignores Merlin’s increasing scepticism. “His stammer is back. What do I do?”

“Can I see him?”

Despite himself, Eggsy smiles a little and says, “You sure that oughtn’t to be ‘May I see him’?”

“I am the Queen, Eggsy. Very few people have either the will or authority to deny me.”

“I guess. Yeah. Yes, you can, unless you’re still suffering any side effects from V-Day. But he’s not in the U.K., and if you’re busy I don’t want to disrupt your schedule.”

“My schedule can wait. We’re talking about the man who raised me. Where are you?”

“Kentucky, U.S.A.”

“The people on my side can trace your signal. I will be there in roughly eight hours. In the meantime, just tell him the truth.”

“He won’t believe me.”

“You have always been my father’s closest confidant, barring my mother. I trust you’re close to Galahad too.”

“Yes, but—”

“No excuses, young man. He should be able to handle it. If he can get us through war, he can get himself through anything.”

“Yes, Ma’am. Do you want me to tell him anything?”

“Just tell him I’m on my way. That ought to be enough.”

“I understand. I’ll see you in a bit, yeah?”

“Yes. Until then, Eggsy,” the Queen says, and hangs up.

“This is going to be a recurring theme, isn’t it,” Merlin asks, raising an eyebrow once Eggsy has pocketed his phone. “Me not knowing and you not telling me anything.”

“Not now, Merlin,” Eggsy says nervously. “Promise me that if ‘e kicks me out o’ the room you’ll stay with ‘im?”

“Do I want to know why he might kick you out?”

“You’ll know, if you follow me in now,” Eggsy grimaces.

Eggsy drags his feet as he walks back to Harry’s bed. Harry looks at him directly the moment they come into view, and he warily tracks their movements toward him.

“Lilibet’s coming. She’ll be ‘ere in ‘bout eight ‘ours,” Eggsy tells him, laying a hand on the rails of Harry’s bed.

“That is…good.” Harry ends his sentence with a tentative upward lilt as if he’s asking Eggsy a question, and Eggsy’s heart aches for the confidence that has sudden fled from Harry’s person.

“Yes.” Eggsy swallows. “She also wanted me to tell you that it’s not the 1940s.”

Harry stares at him, stunned. “W-what are you blathering on about?” he finally says.

“Look around you, Albert. It ain’t the 1940s. The year is 2015.”

“Edw-Edward, this is not…funny,” Harry says severely. “You’re not a b-boy anymore. Be serious.”

“I _am_ serious. Do you remember telephones? They came in two parts, the one you put t’your ear and the one you speak into, and they ‘ad wires that go on for miles.” Eggsy retrieves his phone from his trousers. “This is what they look like now. Wireless. Like the radio.” He hands it over to Harry.

“N-no. This can’t be true. You’re having me…on,” Harry denies, shaking his head.

“Would I? You know me, Albert. Would I?”

“I don’t know.” Harry stops talking for a bit, alternating between trying not to swallow his tongue and trying to push out words. “If this isn’t 1942, then surely you’re not Edward.”

“Technically I’m not,” Eggsy concedes. “And technically you aren’t Albert either. Do you believe in reincarnations, Albert?”

Harry’s reply is swift and blunt, “No.”

Eggsy takes a deep, steadying breath. “Then you’re not gonna believe this. We’re not Albert or Edward. Albert died in 1952. Somewhere in the early 1960s, ‘arry ‘art was born. That’s you, by the way, if you ‘aven’t figured it out already. I come into the picture much later."

“I don’t b-believe you.”

“Test me, Albert. Ask me ‘bout things only I could know. I swear ‘m not pullin’ your leg.”

“You could be a…very thorough s-spy.”

Eggsy smiles sardonically. “I actually _am_ a spy, if you’ll believe _that_. Well, sort of a spy. It’s my day job now.” He can feel the heat of Merlin’s disapproving glowers on his back, but compared to the burn of Harry’s distrust Merlin might as well be a plastic candle flame.

“How can I trust what you say?”

“You don’t ‘ave to. At least, not until Lilibet gets ‘ere and you can talk to ‘er yourself. But until then, you’ll have t’make do with just me, ‘m sorry. Let’s just assume you’re no longer Albert and take things from there, yeah?”

“I c-can’t. If you’re…here, w-where is my w-wife?”

“‘M not sure it’s a good idea to…” Eggsy mutters, pointedly looking away from Harry.

“Oh just spit it out!” Harry suddenly exclaims, frustrated. “That is what you are here for, isn’t it? To enlighten me? So just do your bloody job!” Albert has always been particularly eloquent when he’s _not_ trying to be eloquent.

Eggsy stares at Harry, who is heaving deep wheezing breaths from his outburst.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t h-have done that. It w-was most…uncourteous of me,” Harry mumbles.

Eggsy tries to brush it off. “It’s fine. You’re goin’ through a rough patch.”

“No it’s—it’s _not_ fine. It w-was uncalled…for. Very rude. I have no excuse.”

Eggsy grips the rail tightly. “The Missus don’t remember nothin’. It’s just you and me, as far as I know.”

“But why?” Harry levels a broken gaze at Eggsy, who feels his heart break like he’s an extension of Harry’s self. He looks so lost in a way he hasn’t been since the first few years of becoming King. “Why you? Elizabeth is—was—my…rock. If anybody should b-be here, it ought to…be her.”

Eggsy wonders if Harry knows how his words morph into shards of ice when they reach his ears, how they pierce through his skin to strike at his warm, beating heart. Although Eggsy has asked himself the same question too many times in the months between Harry’s supposed death and now, it feels far more devastating when he hears the same come right from Harry’s mouth. It’s one thing to think that his memories might have been a mistake, but it’s quite another altogether for _Harry_ to tell him to his face without hesitation that it should’ve been Elizabeth in Eggsy’s place, that Eggsy is absolutely nothing at all compared to her.

It’s obviously something that Eggsy’s known all along, but at least, when it was just him, he could pretend.

“And ‘m sorry, Albert. You’ll ‘ave to make do with just me,” Eggsy tells Harry tightly.

The frustration fades rapidly from Harry’s expression. His face collapses and he says abruptly, looking greatly chastised, “I’ve said something insensitive. I don’t mean to make it sound like you aren’t—”

“I know,” Eggsy interrupts. He smiles gently at Harry even though it seeps every bit of resolve from him. “You’ve told me many times not t’short-change myself, remember? You’re even tellin’ me the same thing in this time. ‘M not nobody, I know that. The Missus is just more important t’you than me. It’s okay. I understand”

“If I’m still telling you to keep y-your head up more than 70…years later, you’re obviously not—not doing a very good j-job of it.” Harry’s lips pull into a thin smile that lets Eggsy know that he doesn’t mean the jab. Eggsy appreciates the effort.

“Well not everyone can turn their lives around in 10 years, yeah?” Eggsy banters.

“I’ve hardly…turned anything around in 10 years, Edward. If anything, I’m the—the one that’s b-been taken for a ride.”

“At any rate, it’s just us for now. Lilibet’s an old woman—please don’t act surprised when you see ‘er. It can’t be good for both your ‘ealth if you react badly.”

“I w-will try not to.”

“You’ll also ‘ave to start thinking ‘bout where you want t’recuperate in the long term,” Eggsy reminds him. “I’d prefer if you came back t’our organisation’s own infirmary, of course, but maybe you can figure somethin’ out with Lilibet as well if that’s what you like.”

“Our organisation?”

Eggsy grins. “Didn’t I tell you yet? You’re a spy too, Albert.”

“I really doubt…that. I-I’m not spy m-material.”

“Maybe not right now, but I promise you, ‘arry was the best I’ve ever seen.”

Merlin coughs distinctly _not_ discreetly beside Eggsy, and murmurs with a voice deliberately pitched just loud enough for Eggsy’s ears, “You haven’t seen very many spies, obviously.” Eggsy steps on his foot.

“Even if w-what…you said about reincarnations is—true, I don’t remember…anything about being Harry Hart. I w-wouldn’t belong,” Harry points out.

“We’ll sort this out when Lilibet gets here, yeah? ‘M just gonna…pop by the cafeteria and pretend I don’t exist until she comes.” Eggsy takes a tentative step toward the exit.

“You can stay if you w-want,” Harry says quietly, almost too softly for Eggsy to hear.

“Yeah?” Eggsy asks, barely daring to hope.

“Yes,” Harry confirms, and gives him a small smile.

“Okay.”

Off to the side, Merlin makes a very put-upon face because the only conjecture he has come up with about ‘Albert’ is so outrageous it just can’t be true, and Eggsy is determinedly ignoring his dying need for more information in favour of playing house with Harry. He hopes this ‘Lilibet’, whoever she is, has better luck with the two of them than he did.

\---

There is a seldom acknowledged list that Merlin has put together to amuse himself when the agents he’s supposed to be wrangling are being particularly foolhardy. It details the things that Merlin has determined, in decreasing order of probability, he will never have the chance to experience. High on the list is skydiving on Jupiter. Slightly below that is handling an agent who defers to his advice at all times. Somewhere in between the two is an item that he will now have to strike off his list.

Coming through the entrance of Harry’s ward at a pace that is rather too quick to be stately is the bloody _Queen of England_ herself. In the United bloody States of America. In fucking _Kentucky_.

Merlin tries to be discreet about his staring, but he probably needn’t have bothered because the Queen has her eyes fixed on a particular spot in the room to the exclusion of all other things. Her bodyguards—Merlin assumes they’re bodyguards, but for all he knows they could be CIA or MI6 or a random bunch of boys she picked up from a beach—crowd her from all sides so the only thing Merlin sees of her is her bright pink hat and snatches of a similarly bright pink coat.

He isn’t the only one being laughably indiscreet, of course, because there are doctors and nurses peeking in from the hallway, and all around the ward patients are stirring awake as if the Queen’s very presence could rouse a dead person from their eternal slumber.

There is a bit of a squabble amongst the Queen and her army of black-suited men wearing not-at-all-inconspicuous sunglasses, and, after a couple minutes of vigorous hand gesturing from both colour-coded factions, the bodyguards shuffle away to begin drawing the curtains around Harry’s bed. The Queen steps neatly into the area that would be enclosed by the curtains, and then suddenly Merlin—and Eggsy and Harry and the bloody _Queen_ —is surrounded by a fluttering wall of light green cloth.

“Elizabeth?” Harry asks warily as if he can’t recognise that the Queen herself, whose face populates popular and not-so-popular media, is standing right in front of him. Merlin belatedly silently congratulates Harry on getting somebody’s name right for once since they found him here, although he is somewhat concerned that the Queen might be scandalised by his informal address

“Hello, papa,” the Queen says airily, sounding far younger than a person her age has any right to, and Merlin is forced to acknowledge not just the rearrangement of his never-going-to-happen-to-him list but also the fact that his completely farfetched guesses have apparently not been so farfetched after all.

(Or perhaps they _are_ farfetched, but the laws of nature and balance of probabilities tend to break down in close proximity to any combination of Eggsy and/or Harry. It is a hypothesis worth testing when the world stops bending logic like it were a cooked strand of spaghetti.)

“Eggsy,” the Queen says, nodding pleasantly at the young man.

“W-what on earth is an…Eggsy?” Harry asks, bewildered.

“That would be me,” Eggsy says sheepishly, then turns to the Queen. “Your Majesty,” he greets.

“I will have none of that proper nonsense when it’s just the three of us,” the Queen insists.

“It’s not just the three of us, Ma’am,” Eggsy tells her, eyes darting to Merlin. How nice of Eggsy to remember that he exists only now when before he was all ‘Albert this’ and ‘Albert that’ and ‘Albert would you prefer if I simper here or simper another three centimetres to the left’. He suppresses a smile—Merlin knows immediately that the brat didn’t warn him about this on purpose, the cheeky bastard—and waves a hand in Merlin’s general direction, “This is Merlin. He’s our quartermaster.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Merlin,” she says, offering her hand. Merlin gingerly takes it and kisses it, trying and failing to get his mind working again.

“Your Majesty,” he manages even though he swears that the muscles in his face have all spontaneously vanished and that as a result he shouldn’t be capable of more than open-mouthed gaping at this point.

“Now that we’re all suitably introduced, Eggsy, call me Lilibet. You too, papa.”

Harry looks about as shocked as Merlin feels, which is a great comfort in some ways, but less in others (because, really, if Merlin’s face is currently displaying that level of incredulity then all his Kingsman training has been for naught).

“…you’re Queen,” Harry finally says after a long while of swallowing his own tongue.

“That tends to happen when you were the heir presumptive of the previous monarch,” the Queen replies, smiling.

“So this i-isn’t all just—a terribly elaborate but…tasteless prank?”

“I’m afraid not, papa.”

Harry looks about ready to knock himself out by upping the dosage of his morphine drip.

Merlin needs a drink.


End file.
